GOP senators waiting for President Obama's outreach

President Barack Obama will need Republican senators to pass his ambitious agenda — and the White House has even identified the top prospects.

But after months of buildup and a week since his State of the Union address, key aides on the Hill and at the White House acknowledge that even GOP senators who fit Obama’s vision of bipartisanship — Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — are all waiting to hear anything from the president.

Text Size

-

+

reset

Behind the Curtain: Inside Obama's press strategy

Obama has to have legislative partners involved from the outset to give other Senate Republicans, and eventually their colleagues in the House, cover on passing immigration reform, gun control legislation and fiscal reforms to avoid the sequester. The same goes for getting the new universal preschool programs he promised last week, or even his longer-shot bid to get Congress to take action on climate change proposals.

But the GOP senators who seem most promising to fill this role have their own political prospects at home to worry about — and 2014 reelection bids that they’re hoping won’t go the way of Charlie Crist, whose own 2010 Senate bid was sunk in large part due to one hug he shared with the president.

Still, they’d like to have a conversation. Or at least get a phone call. And with the president’s whole agenda on the line, they’re surprised that hasn’t happened yet.

“I view this as a time to turn the page and take a fresh approach from both the White House and the congressional perspective and try to work together on these difficult political issues that have to be addressed,” said Portman, who’s seen as a potential partner on fiscal issues and is still waiting to hear from Obama. “Doing it at the level of our leadership and the president hasn’t worked.”

Obama’s shift to a permanent campaign, GOP senators and aides say, may help boost his case for the 2014 midterms, but it’s not helpful to making deals now.

Kirk, who holds the same Illinois Senate seat that Obama once did, has the most to gain locally from working with the president. They never had much of a relationship — the two spoke just once when Kirk was recovering from a stroke last year. A source familiar with the conversations said that’s continued to be the case despite Kirk becoming the leading Senate Republican on gun control, having introduced trafficking legislation with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and joining Coburn and Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to work on a bipartisan framework for universal background checks for gun purchases that Obama has praised as evidence of burgeoning consensus.

Kirk and Obama have never spoken about any of it. The most significant interaction Kirk’s had with the president since the gun control work began was a fist-bump before the State of the Union speech.

Alexander quit his leadership position last year ostensibly to build more consensus — though he is now working to avoid a 2014 primary challenge at home. He’s seen by the White House as someone who can be helpful on a range of issues — though that’s something he also wouldn’t know by hearing from the White House directly.

Alexander, who said he’s anxious to work on health care spending, hasn’t forgotten the leaked revelation that he — along with Coburn — declined an invitation to screen the “Lincoln” movie at the White House in November.